A therapist's take on life, the world, you and me.

An Aspirational Purchase

At Barnes & Noble, where I once worked as a marketing exec, we bandied about the phrase “aspirational purchase” to portray a small, but profitable segment of our sales.

Aspirational purchase meant you bought the book not because you were going to read it, but because you aspired to read it. You might even convince yourself you were going to – but in all likelihood it would serve as a pretentious coffee table tchotchke, an impressive (if un-cracked) spine on a decorative bookshelf, or a useful device to prop up a little kid’s butt so he could reach the cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving.

An aspirational purchase is intended to impress – you want to be seen buying it. It tends to be something conservative as well. And long. And difficult. “War and Peace” is the classic aspirational purchase, but you might also pick up something with a political message that makes you look wise and open-minded, like “The Satanic Verses” (which, for the record, I actually read.) (No, I’ve never plumbed War and Peace. However, I embrace the fact that plenty of you certainly have read it and, yes, loved it and desire for me to acknowledge you’ve read it and how much you loved it – to which I reply, in advance, how very nice for you.)

Law school is an aspirational purchase.

You choose law because it’s more impressive than an internship or “assistant” job – which is how you’d have to start out in an ordinary career. With law you jump directly to the land of the grown-ups without passing Go. From the moment you graduate, you have a “profession.” That means (at least in theory) you wear a suit and people take you seriously. You’re an “attorney” – not someone’s assistant.

Law is conservative, too. It’s about the least imaginative thing you could do. A law degree establishes (at least in theory) that you are serious and focused and down-to-business. No more staying up all night partying for you. It’s time to retire that giant plastic bong with the “Steal Your Face” decals and step up to adulthood, dude.

Law is also difficult – or it appears difficult – an interminable slog through tedious lectures and exams, culminating in the bar exam – a difficult, interminable slog that exists for no reason other than the apparent requirement that there be a difficult, interminable slog at the end of a difficult interminable slog.

You can wrap also yourself up in saving the world, as a lawyer – or attempt to. I used to assure people my destiny was to become a “civil rights lawyer.” That lasted one year – until the ACLU lawyer at my summer internship told me I needed “big firm” experience. (This was not heartbreaking news; my classmates were stampeding to big firms and the thought of the money produced an instant adrenaline rush.)

Book stores love aspirational purchases. The books themselves are all the same – “classics” or merely obvious choices no one so much reads as aspires to read. Delightfully – from the marketer’s point of view – buyers seldom grasp that giant, fancy editions of books like “War and Peace” can be printed in quantity for next to nothing, especially because most of these titles reside in the public domain. But you can charge a lot, since they look thick and impressive, especially if you bind them in leather with gold print to produce something Alistair Cooke might clutch while introducing Masterpiece Thee-ah-tuh.

A law degree, similarly, costs next to nothing to manufacture. The “product” a law school shills consists of standardized lectures any lawyer could deliver in his sleep, coupled with the systematic grading of a pile of exams. There’s no originality involved. I haven’t practiced law in more than a decade, but I’m confident I could deliver a Contracts lecture tomorrow to a hall filled with bored 1L’s and they’d never notice the difference. Just give me a store-bought outline and a half hour to refresh my memory.

Law schools are cheap and easy to run, but the top ones (and many non-top ones) charge over $50,000 per year for tuition, room and board. As a rough calculation, if law school ran all year long, that would be nearly $1,000 per week. Since it actually only runs about 8 months of the year, let’s say law school costs around $1,400 per week. If you have seven lectures per week, that means you’re paying $200 per lecture.

Two hundred dollars per lecture. Roughly one hundred dollars per hour to sit drowsing with one hundred other weary souls, each of whom is also paying one hundred dollars per hour for the privilege.

That’s obscene – a bit like charging someone $35 for a fancy-looking leather edition of a public domain chestnut like War and Peace that costs $3.25 in paper, ink and delivery charges.

Who would be fool enough to buy it?

Well, it’s an aspirational purchase.

At New York Law School – hardly a first-tier operation, and typical as law schools go – an average student graduates with $125k in debt. They recently expanded the size of their classes. No wonder they’ve built a shiny new building and boast one of the top ten endowments in the country. They are earning mad bank – but it’s blood money, since their graduates wind up jobless and in debt up to their eyebrows. One of my clients spotted a notice recently on an ad for paralegal positions: “No J.D.’s.”

Yeah – it’s that bad.

Aspirational purchases – whether “War & Peace” or law school – are a rip-off, because the buyer doesn’t know what he’s buying. He acts on impulse, and chases an aspiration – a fantasy – rather than reality.

You aren’t going to get around to reading “War and Peace” someday when you retire. If you didn’t get to it in college, then sorry, that massive Russian tome from the 19th century isn’t going to get read by you or anyone you know, any more than that law degree is going to earn you a massive salary – or prove “versatile” if you decide not to practice. Those are fantasies.

Aspirational purchases are usually “point of sale” items. You stack them up near the cash registers, so buyers, who are especially impulsive when bored and waiting in a lengthy queue, are liable to toss it in at the last moment. Hmmm…you ponder, standing in line holding the latest Stephen King…there’s “The Selected Poems of Robert Browning”…and there’s “The Tibetan Book of the Dead” and there’s a Dove Raspberry and Dark Chocolate Swirl Bar. Why not grab all three, while I’m here – just in case?

That’s called an “up-sell” and it’s what marketing is all about. Some clever marketing exec (like me) just convinced you (semi-consciously) to buy not merely what you actually wanted (the Stephen King), but a whole bunch of additional junk you neither want nor need.

Law school is also a point of sale item. Your early twenties resemble the checkout line. You’re out of college and killing time, unsure what you’re really looking for (besides a little romance, some excitement and a way to pay the bills.) You’re impulsive, and tend to make big mistakes because you want to do something – anything – and it seems important to get started right away. Law school sits there, staring at you, until you think – hmmm, I wonder if that would work…it’s something to do…

For the record, when I went to law school, I possessed no inkling what a “civil rights lawyer” did, or was. After my primary goal mutated into becoming a “corporate lawyer” (i.e., making money) I had even less idea what I was getting myself into. How did I pick corporate? Simple. Litigation seemed a non-starter, because I hated Civ Pro and loathe arguing. Corporate – whatever it was – was the remaining option. I had the vague sense I’d end up with a BMW and a secretary.

I repeat: I had no idea – none – what a “corporate lawyer” did. It sounded cool, and I wanted the money. The rest I’d figure out when the time came.

That, in a nutshell, defines an aspirational purchase: I grabbed something on impulse because I thought it sounded cool.

Do not do as I have done. Take your time. Figure out who you are, and what you want.

Aspirational purchases are a scam. Leave them behind, for suckers who don’t know any better.
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This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.

43 Responses

I made such an aspirational purchase; finished with a J.D. from Tulane and $175k of debt. Things went well for a few years, and felt real good about myself…even weathered the worst of the 07/08/09 economic implosion. Had a “good” job (that I found mind-numbingly dull), good income (low six figures), and a generally good life (wife, two dogs, modest house, very modest car) that I was able to balance on top of $1500/mo loan payments. Then, I got cut. Not a job in sight. Each day that passes is like a punch in the gut – that aspirational purchase seemed so good for a while…but instead of taking it all the way to the bank I now stand in the rubble of financial ruin with no way out…

TU07,
You absolutely must get rid of those loans!! You will never prosper until you get rid of them. You and your wife have to make it a priority (once you find a job). It will suck big time for a few years, but I promise you, you will sleep better at night. It will literally set you free.

Amen to this poster, I am in exactly the same boat, with the same loans from the same law school. Shaking my head at my 26-year old self, signing those promissory notes with absolutely no idea what the true cost would be. Good luck to you.

I get it. I agree that many people shouldn’t be going to law school, and maybe law school isn’t the best way to prepare someone to be a lawyer, and I faced some of the struggles you have decribed in your articles, and if I hadn’t finally gotten treatment for ADHD (undiagnosed for my entire life up to that point), I probably wouldn’t be practicing law, but… I made it, and I like being a lawyer. I really do, even with the loan payments (well maybe not those). Law school may be an unreasonable price for admission to practice, but I did know what I was getting into. I like your articles, and I’m sure you’ve helped people, but please don’t crap all over the profession, some of us do find fulfillment.

I’m a 2L who has been reading your column for over a year now. Your posts tend to the melodramatic, but this is spot on. Law school is an aspirational purchase for many of my 2L friends who came straight from college. Unlike them, I did my homework before ending up here–worked for three years as a New York Big Law paralegal (and actually enjoyed the bulk of my time there), traveled the world, goofed around and got a master’s in a pleasant subject before ending up in law school. I know what’s up ahead. I see two types of straight-from-college people in my class–ones who have completely burned out and just don’t give a damn anymore, and ones who are overburdening themselves with needless extracurriculars that just leaves them sucked dry and tired, completely clueless about what’s up ahead in Big Law. I, on the other hand, am lapping up as much as I can in terms of classes–I enjoy the reading and even laugh at some of the case law assignments. I am exposing myself to a lot of doctrine (taking the maximum class load), but am not stretching myself thin with extracurriculars. A leisurely but educationally enriching law school experience is what I value because I damn well know what is around the corner. Might as well maximize this time out of the real world before plunging in again.

So to any college seniors reading this, please do what I did. You will find law school infinitely more enriching and tolerable once you realize the trials, tribulations and, yes, triumphs that await you in the practice of law. More importantly, you will have the time to do things that you will not be able to do once loans and Big Law have got a hold of you.

Interesting piece, but I don’t think the analogy works, because clearly there are millions of people in this world who have read the classics (including War and Peace in its entirety), been inspired by them, appreciated the challenges they present in contrast to other works, and, though they may not themselves write similar works, find them to be a positive influence. (Read Stephen King’s “On Writing” – no doubt his work (much of which I personally find excellent) is far afield from Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, or Melville, but there is little doubt that the themes and even writing style of those authors are ones that have influenced his work.

I think the better analogy is that one has to determine when the right time is to tackle one of the classics, and be in the right frame of mind to do it. If one picks up Crime and Punishment or The Iliad and assumes its going to be the same as reading a work by Dennis Lehane or Stephen Ambrose (both fine authors) they will probably get frustrated and abandon the effort.

I don’t really agree that law school is, normatively, an aspirational degree. It is unclear from your post whether you believe that, across the board, its an aspirational degree (in other words, you are making a normative statement) or that it can be for some people. It depends on what one is looking to get out of the process. I agree 100% with you that aspiring lawyers need to get a much better idea of what lawyers actually do day in and day out. God knows I didn’t and I should have, but that was my fault, not law schools’ or the legal profession’s fault. Law school provides a method of approaching problems and issue spotting, and (if done correctly) forces students to address challenges to their reasoning (and how they document that reasoning in legal briefs or corporate documents) in ways that usually they have not experienced in undergraduate school. (That is an entirely separate issue from whether law schools do a good job transparently explaining job prospects).

One part of your piece is puzzling. You state that you chose “corporate” because you didn’t like arguing in “litigation.” But that’s painting with a pretty broad brushstroke for those practice areas. Even at BigLaw, there is a significant difference in transactional work for publicly reporting companies or M&A work, versus employment work (which can straddle both contractual/transactional work and litigation) 40 Act advisory work. Or bankruptcy work, where the top practioners tend to be folks who are just as adept at negotiating a corporate deal, and then litigating it in the courtroom. And within litigation (my own field) though I agree that the research, briefing, and arguing process will be applicable regardless of the subject area, the pacing, feel, and approach will be vastly different in, for example, multi-district class actions, versus one-off corporate disputes, versus employment disputes, And that’s just the BigLaw model – once it disperses to smaller boutiques, mid size or regional firms, etc. its extremely difficult to characterize.

Finally, I respectfully take issue with your statement “I’m confident I could deliver a Contracts lecture tomorrow to a hall filled with bored 1L’s and they’d never notice the difference. Just give me a store-bought outline and a half hour to refresh my memory.” That statement is (hopefully unintentionally) disparaging to anyone who works as an educator, whether the subject is Contract Law or US history or mathematics. You are probably correct that you could deliver the lecture, and that 1L’s would be bored. The real question is whether you could deliver it in a manner that actually got the class enthused and interested in the subject. And it certainly is possible – speaking from personal experience I never would have thought that bankruptcy law would have been an interesting subject to me at all. My professor in law school on that subject was incredible – not only teaching the technical details, but explaining its moral implications, its relevance to business decisions, and what it says about us as a society when we forgive debts (but at the same time carve out certain classes of creditors). And its not a field of law I practice in at all at this point. That was a testament to my professor’s talent as a legal educator, and educator, period. It probably would have been the case had they taught environmental law, torts, legal history, or tax law.

Will, I think your problem – and the problem of many of us who attended the elite law schools is that you fell prey to the lure of big law. Big law does not teach you how to set up your own practice. Rather than becoming a therapist you probably should of just set up your practice and “counseled” like criminal defense clients or family law clients. That would’ve made you happier because you could of utilized your law license, helped people, and not resented the profession. Trouble is, you would of probably had to have slogged through a few years of being a public defender or something non-prestigious and because you did go to Harvard etc. you wanted the prestige. Fatal misstep.

I went to NYU Law. No one so much as mentioned setting up my own practice. The choice was pursue “public interest” (which we all paid lip service to) or trundle off to biglaw (which we all eventually did.) I never harbored the slightest interest in litigation, so becoming a public defender never occurred to me. I’m not sure how my going to Harvard or longing for prestige relates to any of this. I was simply an idiot kid from New Jersey making my single mother happy by earning a JD, and making NYU happy by getting into a top law firm and making myself happy by avoiding litigation, which didn’t seem like anything I wanted to do.

I chose Corporate because at that point it seemed the only option, and I ran off to S&C because it was the “top” firm and I figured I’d make lots of money. That was as far as I took the thought process. I guess I could have “counseled” defense clients, but I wasn’t interested in criminal law, or I could have “counseled” family law clients – but isn’t “family law” just a euphemism for “divorce law”? That sounds god-awful. I had no interest in either of those options because I had no interest in either of those options.

I ended up a psychotherapist. I don’t “counsel” people – I listen to them and employ psychoanalytic interventions. Oh, yeah – it’s super-prestigious and I earn a fortune. The paparazzi pursue me everywhere. Some day I might rake in as much as a first year at S&C. Here’s hoping.

I guess what I am driving at Peoples’ Therapist is that I think you like counseling folks on a one to one basis. What I am saying is that you could of done this as an attorney but the pressures placed on folks in law school to pursue the prestige factor pushes out any sort of meaningful work. Would it not of been nice if NYU had showed you how to have a top flight solo shop where you could counsel your clients in a meaningful way. TTT cities all over the country have just these sort of solo shops. I am saying is that perhaps what would have made you the most happy was a little solo shop of your own and then you would practice law and not regard the practice as completely a big law sweatshop.

Well, it’s possible. I have a few clients who have done the solo shop thing. I don’t think there’s all that much “counseling” involved, but at least they work for themselves, which is a whole lot better than selling your soul to biglaw.

Part of the reason that I went to law school was to take another step on the road to Greater Glory(TM).

The problem with law is practicing law.

It’s not like it’s that interesting or meaningful. And I actually get people medical care and keep them from becoming homeless. I even represent homeless people.

I’ve never found work the didn’t put in a bad mood by the end of the day.

Part of it has to be that you spend the first 26 years of your life doing nothing, taking tests, and just being more intelligent than everyone else. And *then* you get thrown into a bizarre world where you are expected to be productive, accomplish things, and put forth actual effort.

I’m exaggerating somewhat here, but those are my generally *feelings* about the matter.

I’m with JP. I’ve never been a litigator, which might be more interesting, but transactional law is really boring. Drafting contracts is boring stuff, no matter how interesting the deal is. For the first couple of years, it was semi-interesting because I, like most people, was going from being a completely green student to learning how business is done. And, if you’re in big law, you get to work on big deals, which really impresses (some) parents and family members, so mission accomplished.

After the second year, deals by and large start looking the same, and you realize that, marketing aside, growing professionally now means things like being a better contract drafter and knowing the law in your field better. I’m sure there are exceptions, but most people would find this to be drudgery no matter how nice the partners are. When I walk down the halls at my big law office, the only people smiling during the day are the rainmaking partners. I have zero days during the year where I walk out to the office ramped up with enthusiasm. I’m not expecting to have a job where I can be Richard Branson every day, but I would like to find something that I enjoy doing at least 30% of the time.

Here’s a Cracked article on the subject of how Life is Hard that goes along with my Work is Work comment.

“So, people bail on diets. Not just because they’re harder than they expected, but because they’re so much harder it seems unfair, almost criminally unjust. You can’t shake the bitter thought that, “This amount of effort should result in me looking like a panty model.”

It applies to everything. America is full of frustrated, broken, baffled people because so many of us think, “If I work this hard, this many hours a week, I should have (a great job, a nice house, a nice car, etc). I don’t have that thing, therefore something has corrupted the system and kept me from getting what I deserve, and that something must be (the government, illegal immigrants, my wife, my boss, my bad luck, etc).”

I really think Effort Shock has been one of the major drivers of world events. Think about the whole economic collapse and the bad credit bubble. You can imagine millions of working types saying, “All right, I have NO free time. I work every day, all day. I come home and take care of the kids. We live in a tiny house, with two shitty cars. And we are still deeper in debt every single month.” So they borrow and buy on credit because they have this unspoken assumption that, dammit, the universe will surely right itself at some point and the amount of money we should have been making all along (according to our level of effort) will come raining down.”

My response to Golem’s last response to me – I have no idea how I’ll do on my own either, but I don’t live in NYC and don’t need to make that much. My practice is not staff/stuff intensive, I could do a lot with a laptop, printer and subscriptions, and if I have to do law that may be good enough for me.

I don’t really want to service big clients for big bucks – that requires commitment I don’t have and availability I won’t give. 700-1000 hours a year of mundane work would be fine as long as I get my Holy Grail – non-law time.

Well MS, I bet your Top 5 school did nothing to prepare you for actually setting up your own shop but rather shoved you in the direction of a sweatshop. I am not sure what the chances are of you setting up your own shop and having it be successful are. I do know however that the entire system is geared towards servicing the large firms from the law firms on down. It costs a lot of money to have overhead, secretaries, paralegals and all that jazz.

I see people comment that they like being a lawyer. I don’t understand it. I have a good legal job with a pretty good salary…I am thankful for my job, but I don’t like being a lawyer…never had, never will. I should have gone into sales. I would be making a ton more money and I wouldn’t have any law school debt.

THAT’S the first thing that’s ever made you respect me? Gee, thanks. You might read my first book – I respected myself for writing that baby.

Harvard didn’t make much of a dent on my mom’s disgust for Son #2, but when you’re gay you have a lot of parental disappointment to compensate for. It killed her that the Harvard prestige didn’t translate into dollars and cents. I was happily scribbling novels and lolling afternoons away as a temp secretary. She was calling me each and every week to ream me out for being a failure, disappointment, etc. It didn’t seem to register with her that my lover and many of my friends had recently died of AIDS and that I was in something of a state of shock. She wanted money – and prestige. Of course, that’s what I’m always being accused of chasing by all you readers who don’t “respect” me, so whatever… Thanks for your “respect”. I assure you it’s hard-won.

I’m happy doing what I’m doing. I have no idea if it’s “prestigious” because I don’t care. And I’m having a grand time scribbling away at a science fiction novel during those rare idle moments. Life is good.

Stay true to yourself. Do something fun, that speaks to your soul. If you’re any good at it, you might win “prestige” – whatever that is.

Money and prestige…do we have the same Mom? Mine had/has a very 1950s/60s obsession with “diamonds, furs, Cadillacs and trips to Europe” – all things she *could* have had if they hadn’t had to pay to raise and educate me. Unless I got a JD or MD, then the investment would be worthwhile and I would be redeemed.

So I’m a lawyer looking to leave who dresses like a rather butch Unitarian/Buddhist social studies teacher and drives a modest car. Take that Mommie Dearest!!!!

My parents, father especially, didn’t want me to pursue show business as a career because I guess they thought I’d wind up a whore. They’re dead now and my interest in it has died. You sound like you’d be happier in a creative field and I say go for it! You’re obviously smart enough to write something more than these columns.

It’s time for your appointment

Will Meyerhofer, JD LCSW-R is a psychotherapist in private practice in TriBeCa, in New York City.
You can visit his private practice website at: www.aquietroom.com.
Will holds degrees from Harvard, NYU School of Law and The Hunter College School of Social Work, and used to be an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell before things changed...
Now, in addition to his work as a psychotherapy, he writes books and blog entries and a column for AboveTheLaw.com.